Sewing – Special machines – Article attaching
Reexamination Certificate
2000-05-24
2001-05-22
Izaguirre, Ismael (Department: 3765)
Sewing
Special machines
Article attaching
C112S110000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06234096
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to a device for feeding buttons to a sewing position using a conveyor belt and, more particularly, to a device for feeding buttons to a sewing position while centering the buttons and adjusting the width and height of a button feeding passage in accordance with the dimension of the buttons to be conveyed by the conveyor belt, thus appropriately arranging the buttons on garments at the sewing position.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As well known to those skilled in the art, buttons are originally used to fasten a shirt, coat, etc. and particularly have a collateral function to decorate the clothes when they are sewn on outerwear.
Such buttons are put on during a process of manufacturing clothes. The buttons are typically made of hard materials and have two or more holes at which the buttons are sewn on garments. When the buttons are manually sewn on garments, the buttons have to be manually positioned at the sewing position one by one and this reduces work efficiency of the sewing operation. On the other hand, when the buttons are automatically sewn on garments, the buttons have to be fed to the sewing position by a feeding member. However, it is necessary to prepare a plurality of feeding members having different dimensions meeting different sizes of buttons to be fed to the sewing position. During a sewing process, the feeding members have to be changed in accordance with the sizes of buttons to be fed to the sewing position. This reduces work efficiency and productivity of the sewing process.
In addition, there is no means for centering the buttons at the sewing position. Therefore, the button feeding operation may fail to accomplish the desired work efficiency. Particularly, when the buttons are fed to the sewing position with the buttons being not centered, this causes the buttons to be badly sewn on the garments at the sewing position.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention has been made keeping in mind the above problems occurring in the prior art, and an object of the present invention is to provide a device for feeding buttons to a sewing position while centering the buttons and adjusting the width and height of a button feeding passage in accordance with the dimension of the buttons to be conveyed by a conveyor belt, thus appropriately arranging the buttons on garments at the sewing position.
In order to accomplish the above object, the present invention provides a device for automatically feeding a plurality of buttons to a sewing position using a conveyor belt, comprising: first and second movable guide beds axially arranged along both sides of the conveyor belt, thus defining an elongated button guide channel at a position between them and above the conveyor belt with both a height and a width of the channel being adjustable in accordance with a dimension of buttons to be fed to the sewing position; a height adjusting unit provided above the button guide channel and designed to be vertically movable relative to the channel in accordance with the dimension of the buttons, thus adjusting the height of the channel so as to allow the buttons to be stably conveyed without being movable in a vertical direction on the conveyor belt; a width adjusting unit operated in conjunction with the two guide beds so as to selectively and laterally move the two guide beds in opposite directions, thus adjusting the width of the channel in accordance with a width of the buttons and allowing the buttons to be stably conveyed without being movable from side to side on the conveyor belt; a centering unit operated in conjunction with the width adjusting unit so as to center each of the conveyed buttons at an outlet of the channel; and a rotatable feeding unit arranged to be rotatable between the outlet of the channel and the sewing position, thus feeding each of the centered buttons from the outlet of the channel to the sewing position while retaining the centered position of the buttons.
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patent: 4607585 (1986-08-01), Meier
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patent: 4717061 (1988-01-01), Seki
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patent: 25 17 339 (1976-10-01), None
Izaguirre Ismael
McDermott & Will & Emery
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